Bad publicity for Apple is a potential opportunity for competitors to gain ground, as seen with the iPhone battery controversy compelling HTC and Motorola to issue statements, saying they do not throttle performance on phones with older batteries.

After HTC announced a coming halt to trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange pending "material information" that could impact the stock's value, a move that sparked speculation of a takeover, Google on Wednesday confirmed plans to buy the firm's mobile division team for $1.1 billion.

While Apple and the iPhone ranked first in a survey of U.S. customer satisfaction with smartphones, the company's chief rival -- Samsung -- came second by only the slimmest of margins, according to a J.D. Power report published on Thursday.

The latest -- and more affordable -- high-profile entrant into the emerging virtual reality space, PlayStation VR, is off to a successful start, suggesting consumers are more interested in advanced VR technology if it's available in a simple and economical product.

Reiterated by a report on Wednesday, an executive for Valve's Steam digital delivery platform has declared that preliminary versions of the company's VR platform will be available for macOS and Linux very soon.

Google's forthcoming Daydream platform for virtual reality has support from Android device makers including Samsung, HTC, LG, and Huawei, though the hardware is predicted to only be "slightly better" than Samsung's own Gear VR.

A variety of wireless carriers and smartphone and tablet makers, including Apple, are reportedly being asked by U.S. regulators to explain how they review and push out security updates to their customers.

The iPhone 6s was the most searched-for consumer technology item this year in Google's annual Year in Search rankings, published on Wednesday, though Apple did have competition from companies like Samsung and LG.

Asian tech heavyweights HTC and Lenovo have revealed plans to slash their respective workforces and restructure their mobile phone units, moves designed to stem financial losses as the companies struggle to compete in the global mobile marketplace.

Taiwanese gadget maker HTC, once one of the biggest names in the smartphone market, is now considered essentially worthless by investors as its market value fell below its cash on hand during Monday trading.

The iPhone grew as a platform in May to 43.5 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, encroaching on Android, which shrank slightly to 52.1 percent, according to comScore research data released on Monday.

Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus from last fall beat this year's top Android flagship phones in a series of raw performance benchmarks. However, despite often having a pixel resolution advantage, Android phones also typically deliver worse looking graphics on top of being slower, as revealed by GameBench.

Microsoft's upcoming HoloLens virtual reality accessory took the stage at E3 on Monday, with the company showing how "mixed reality gaming" will work on the future hardware, via its popular Minecraft universe.